I wonder if they would have been better off if they had pulled up the gear and made a belly landing. They probably would have made it to the runway and done less damage to the plane. As it is they were probably only about a hundred feet or less from buying the farm.
The probably apparently started just after they lowered the gear. If they couldn’t get the engines to respond at that point, I doubt they could have gotten the landing gear to come back up either. And those things take a little while to move in or out. This plane was, per the co-pilot who was at the controls, 40 seconds from planned touchdown when the first sign of trouble became apparent. If he’d wasted time trying to get the gear up, he wouldn’t have had time to do the few things he did to keep the plane in the air a few seconds longer.
(typo alert) My last should have started: “The PROBLEM . . . “